WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday barred Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes from entering Washington, D.C., without the court’s approval after President Trump commuted the far-right extremist group leader’s 18-year prison sentence for orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta issued the order two days after Rhodes visited the Capitol, where he met with at least one lawmaker, chatted with others and defended his actions during a mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes, who had been serving an 18-year sentence, was released from a Maryland prison a day earlier.
Mehta’s order applies to seven other people who were convicted of charges in the riot that halted the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump. The order also prohibits them from entering the Capitol building or surrounding grounds without the court’s permission.
The president pardoned, commuted the prison sentences of or ordered the dismissal of charges for those convicted in nearly 1,600 riot cases, including for people convicted of assaulting police officers.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases brought by the Justice Department. He was found guilty of orchestrating a weeks-long plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a desperate bid to keep Trump, a Republican, in power. Rhodes did not enter the building on Jan. 6.
Trump’s sweeping clemency order on Monday upended the largest prosecution in Justice Department history, freeing from prison people seen on camera viciously attacking police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after his election loss. Trump had called Jan. 6 prisoners “patriots” and “hostages.”
In his Wednesday visit to Capitol Hill, Rhodes met with at least one lawmaker and chatted with others. He defended his Jan. 6 actions and refused any responsibility in the violent siege.
Rhodes stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts inside the House office building in the Capitol complex before delivering a lengthy defense of himself and his actions. He told reporters he would be pushing Trump to grant him a full pardon; he said he hoped to eventually speak with the president.
Judges in Washington’s federal court spent Wednesday dismissing a slew of cases against Jan. 6 defendants that were still pending. Several judges took the opportunity in written orders to lament the abrupt end to the prosecutions, saying Trump’s mass pardons won’t change the truth about the mob’s attack on a bastion of American democracy.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said evidence of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is preserved through the “neutral lens” of riot videos, trial transcripts, jury verdicts and judicial opinions.
“Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies,” she wrote.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s election interference case before its dismissal, said the president’s pardons for hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters can’t change the “tragic truth” about the attack. Chutkan added that her order dismissing the case against an Illinois man who was charged with firing a gun into the air during the riot cannot “diminish the heroism of law enforcement officers” who defended the Capitol.
“It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” Chutkan wrote. “And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
In Congress, several Democratic lawmakers said they were stunned by Rhodes’ arrival at the Capitol complex many had fled that day.
“Does he still constitute a threat to public safety? Does he constitute a threat to American constitutional democracy?” asked Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the House’s impeachment of Trump, who was acquitted by the Senate on inciting the insurrection.
California Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) said, “It’s new and interesting that they’re using the front door this time.”
Kunzelman and Richer write for the Associated Press.
